I know nothing about Yemen so I won't comment on that. What I will say, is that a discussion about which party has made which mistake about which war seems pointless to me. All parties have been involved in wars, and often public opinion about whether they are just or not depends on the outcome. The people making the decisions at the time didn't have the benefit of being able to see into the future and so we must judge with the information available at the time. That's why I am slow to blame Blair for Iraq. Sure, he didn't have all the facts and assumed and mislead. But what if Hussein had have had WMD? He kept on pretending that he did...
I'm more interest in Corbynomics, because this is what I find so terrifying. What about rent controls? Are they effective? In my opinion absolutely not; they fail to identify the issues and will have consequences worse than the disease. This is why:
House prices and rents are too high because demand exceeds supply. Net immigration of 330,000 p.a. is part of the problem as is a lack of house building and in particular a lack of building new council houses. Our policies increase demand and suppress supply. What impact will adding rent controls into the mix have? Some landlords will sell - thus reducing supply further. The others will not spend the money maintaining the let accommodation. Nobody is a charity; they aren't going to lose money just because they like the idea of being a landlord. Osborn already stuck the boot into private landlords before he left and that has caused rents to go up more - exactly as expected. Some of you know that I have a vested interest in this topic: I do have some let houses. This summer I spent over £5k repairing them (£4k on one house where they had a ball bearing gun fight inside and broke windows and damaged furniture). I didn't even have that much as deposit and I don't know yet if I'll even get all of the deposit that I did have (landlord rules - has to be assessed by an arbitrator). However I've done the work anyway because it's wrong to let something in that state. If I don't get the deposit I will not make a profit on that house this year. Thus is life. I know that these incidents happen infrequently and so I will absorb it.
However, if I were forced by law to reduce rent or not permitted to raise it I would sell. I could never under-invest and let a slum because its not in my nature. The person who bought the houses might be a shark. He might not give a stuff for tenants. Rent controls have been tried before all over the world and they always result in slums.
For Corbs it's all about ideology: big state; controls... For me it's all about pragmatism. Yes, free markets are in my opinion far more effective than big state but I applaud May for bending her ideology and pledging to build more affordable housing.
